Chapter 32

And I beseech you,
Wrest once the law, to your authority:
To do a great right, do a little wrong.
--Shakspeare.

Ishmael awaited long and patiently for the motley train of Hard-Heart
to disappear. When his scout reported that the last straggler of the
Indians, who had joined their chief so soon as he was at such a
distance from the encampment as to excite no jealousy by their
numbers, had gone behind the most distant swell of the prairie, he
gave forth the order to strike his tents. The cattle were already in
the gears, and the movables were soon transferred to their usual
places in the different vehicles. When all these arrangements were
completed, the little wagon, which had so long been the tenement of
Inez, was drawn before the tent, into which the insensible body of the
kidnapper had been borne, and preparations were evidently made for the
reception of another prisoner. Then it was, as Abiram appeared, pale,
terrified, and tottering beneath a load of detected guilt, that the
younger members of the family were first apprised that he still
belonged to the class of the living. A general and superstitious
impression had spread among them, that his crime had been visited by a
terrible retribution from Heaven; and they now gazed at him, as at a
being who belonged rather to another world, than as a mortal, who,
like themselves, had still to endure the last agony before the great
link of human existence could be broken. The criminal himself appeared
to be in a state, in which the most sensitive and startling terror was
singularly combined with total physical apathy. The truth was, that
while his person had been numbed by the shock, his susceptibility to
apprehension kept his agitated mind in unrelieved distress. When he
found himself in the open air, he looked about him, in order to
gather, if possible, some evidences of his future fate, from the
countenances of those gathered round. Seeing every where grave but
composed features, and meeting in no eye any expression that
threatened immediate violence, the miserable man began to revive; and,
by the time he was seated in the wagon, his artful faculties were
beginning to plot the expedients of parrying the just resentment of
his kinsmen, or, if these should fail him, the means of escaping from
a punishment that his forebodings told him would be terrible.

Throughout the whole of these preparations Ishmael rarely spoke. A
gesture, or a glance of the eye, served to indicate his pleasure to
his sons, and with these simple methods of communication, all parties
appeared content. When the signal was made to proceed, the squatter
threw his rifle into the hollow of his arm, and his axe across his
shoulder, taking the lead as usual. Esther buried herself